One of the things I am really attached to is that all NeoExodus Legacies adventure comes playtested by our players.
Their feedback is extremely valuable to us. I take these playtest as an opportunity to pick the brains of players to see if the flow is right. If they reach the conclusions I want them to reach. And overall see how they like the adventure.
This sometimes leads to situation where I as a writer or editor thinks a course is obvious and it is not. Or a case when dice bungle the equation. Or a case when a player reaches a third conclusion and walk completely off track.
It happens, and it is something I value. If I pick your brain, I must be willing to deal with the fun thingsthat dwell within...
As I'm sure you've devised by now... such a thing happened to the one of my playtest group.
We TPK'd.
Yup.
It happens. But it brought to life a number of points... important ones. Now however we have to go back to the drawing board on some of these issues to fix them.
Another thing that came to light is also one of the difference between Legacies and PFS: that of the gm is allowed to adapt and modify the adventure as needed to provide the players with as good an experience as possible. Running numbers has never been something that attracted me as a gm, but telling a good story still does today.
So it's back to work! I'll let you know how things go.
JP
Thank you JP for sharing that. Far too often (especially in these "living"-style campaigns), GM/Judge/Storytellers view their success in an event in terms of a body count. That was never my role in anything, I'm there to facilitate the story and make sure the players have fun. If we tell a different story than what was intended, so be it. If the players want to ignore the fairy princess in peril and have a clam bake on the shore, I'm hungry and she deserved it after all.
ReplyDeleteGranted I tried to use anything I wrote as a chance to teach a valuable lesson in game play mechanics (at 10th level, you had better be able to deal with an invisible creature, for example) and while my lessons may have been heavy handed, I am insanely proud that I had never killed a player (cohorts and mounts are a dime a dozen and don't count) during my time as Triad in Greyhawk (what up DYVERS!).
So thank you again, my friend. I appreciate this, just wished that we had this guidance pressed into the dice bag of every LC, LG,etc. judge I ever sent out to run an event.
James Poppe